"Drive! She Said"

"Drive! She Said"
September 28, 1976
B-

Laverne & Shirley came back for Season Two, so I and millions of others watched it at 8:30 every Tuesday, after Happy Days.  (Eight Is Enough wouldn't start until the following March and it's entirely possible I didn't watch anything in the 9:00 clock slot yet, definitely not CBS's M*A*S*H in its fifth season, since I was only eight.)  I was more into Welcome Back, Kotter (Season Two) and What's Happening!! (Season One) in the eight to nine block on Thursdays, but I was already an ABC-sitcom connoisseur and Tuesdays would've been my second-favorite night.

Anyway, I laughed a few times at this episode watching it today and I do feel like the cast and production team are gaining more confidence.  Storm knows how to move the characters around, even in the extended driving sequence, and Jack Winter's first of three L & S scripts seems to have a good handle on said characters, from their tendency to name-drop relatives (Shirley apparently has only two cousins, Mikey and Mickey I think it was, and a 79-year-old uncle whose name escapes me) to Laverne's fondness for milk & Pepsi.  Not that everything is in place yet.  For instance, when Lenny & Squiggy make their first entrance, it's through an already open door and they are actually coming downstairs to complain that Laverne and Shirley yelling secrets out the window is interrupting their "orgy"!  And later we see Laverne and Shirley throwing them and their dates out of the car the girls have bought.

The only plot (no subplot or even sub-subplot, like Lenny joining the Reserves, this time) is about Shirley teaching Laverne to drive and it going badly, so Laverne gets her father to teach her.  The weird thing is, I don't remember Laverne and Shirley owning a car at any point and certainly it's gone by the time they have Lenny and Squiggy drive them to California in an ice cream truck.

Bo Kaprall returns as Officer Norman Hughes, who reluctantly gives Laverne a ticket after she runs over his foot!  We find out that they've gone out five times and she agrees to go out with him again, so he says he'll pay for her ticket.  Other than that, no real shipping notes, with Carmine seeing a woman named Lucille (not credited on IMDB) but still calling Shirley "Angel Face."  Note that in the revamped credits, we see Betty Garrett as Mrs. Babish, but her character is not yet introduced or even referred to, although if the girls are going to keep parking their car out front, you'd think the landlady should be informed.